U.S. Army Soldier Sentenced to Life in Prison for Aggravated Sexual Assault

A U.S. Army soldier was sentenced today to life in prison for aggravated sexual assault of a minor, Acting Assistant Attorney General Brian Rabbitt of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Robert J. Higdon Jr. of the Eastern District of North Carolina announced.

Daniel Kemp Sr., 51, of Cameron, North Carolina, pleaded guilty on Dec. 11, 2019, to one count of aggravated sexual assault of a minor before U.S. District Court Chief Judge Terrence W. Boyle of the Eastern District of North Carolina, who sentenced Kemp Sr. earlier today and remanded him to the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service.

According to facts presented in the guilty plea hearings, Kemp Sr. was employed by the U.S. Army as an active duty member when he forcibly raped a minor victim. After an investigation into the sexual assault was underway, his wife, Shanynn Kemp, intentionally harassed and dissuaded a witness from disclosing to law enforcement information about the sexual offense.

The investigation of the case was conducted by U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command and the FBI. This case is being prosecuted by Trial Attorney Kaylynn Foulon of the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS) and Assistant U.S. Attorney Charity Wilson of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of North Carolina.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse, launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and CEOS, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit http://www.justice.gov/psc.

The year 2020 marks the 150th anniversary of the Department of Justice. Learn more about the history of our agency at www.Justice.gov/Celebrating150Years.

Back in the middle 1980s I was stationed in Munich, West Germany. I was the NCOIC of the Judge Advocate General's Corp (JAG) Office there and worked with my Trial Counsel (prosecutor's in the Army) doing court-martials. We had a very serious case of child sexual abuse that involved several families, where the husbands and wives swapped around and they included older children, mainly the girls, ages 12 or 13 up to 15 or 16. The young girls would go with mama to see the man they would be with that night and the man would have sex with mama and daughter both!!! It was sick I tell you, just stinking sick.

Our entire case was on the back of two or three of the girls telling one of their teachers at the school there in Munich all about the sexual events. The Army CID investigated and took sworn statements from the girls. THAT was the case. The families all got a big civilian lawyer, an American, from up in Frankfurt. Somehow, some way, the mothers and fathers got to their daughters and the girls started to change their stories.

It became a goat rope of a case. In the end, we only got enough evidence on two soldiers and their wives. Both got court-martialed and did some jail time and got kicked out of the Army. But the main people were a couple of very senior NCO's. They were the ring leaders, but we could never get the two that got jail time to flip on the others. Don't know why, they just would not deal for lesser charges and potential jail time. It was a case that made you want to puke. My attorney and I had a bunch of interviews with the girls. Their stories seemed real and they seemed truthful. The stories they told were just to graphic to not be true.

My dad worked at the Navy Yard in DC back in 1963-1967, and he had a job that he never talked about. He was in charge of figuring out how to dispose of men who got in trouble. Dishonorable for this one, something else for another, etc. (Given your background, that probably is a piss poor description)

Apparently, he hated the job. My mom told me after he died that the job was his penance for asking for a shore job. He was in line for a destroyer command and had been down in the Cuba Quarantine as the XO on a DD and was recommended for command, but felt he needed to spend some time with his family...and they obliged.

Anyway, my mom said he never talked about it. Apparently, these weren’t the guys who went UA and stuff, these were people who had serious issues and had done bad or seriously immoral things in the eyes of the Navy.

I’ll bet that, like you, he saw things that stuck with him.

The minor was his adopted daughter. Hang him.

Can't, though I disagree, the Supreme Court ruled on a death penalty case out of Mississippi some years back, same thing, a child rape where the child was beaten nearly to death, that you can't have a death penalty unless the victim dies. Frankly, I'd just as soon drag him to the courthouse behind the cruiser, and stop at the nearest tree, before he dies and hang him, but those are the rules we now live with. I can imagine his life is going to be such that he'll wish he got the death penalty. Every moment of every day he's going to have to worry about the inmates getting a hold of him. Otherwise, his life in solitary will slowly drive him to madness.

You are correct. I was assigned at Fort McClellan here in Alabama back in the late 70s and early 80s. McClellan was the One Station Unit Training base for military police and the chemical schools. We had a major case of MP drill sergeants and even a couple of officers who were messing around with the female trainees. The sergeants, some with 15 to 18 years of services got convicted and kicked out of the service. Lost their entire careers!!

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